When A “Good” Class Goes “Bad”

The article When a "Good" Class Goes "Bad" (and Back to "Good" Again!) provided some excellent tips to gaining and maintaining control of your classroom. Two of the tips that I found interesting were that he stopped writing names of misbehaving students on the board and he stopped calling home for bad behavior. Those strategies brought to mind the adage "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Too often, we (teachers) get caught up in the "control" aspect of the classroom and forget about the human element (we all respond better to positive comments than to negative ones). I've always believed that most students can be "worked" and that if I am yelling at my students, I have already lost control of the classroom.